Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the additional implication that, by doing so, they have led to increased traffic
and a closing down of local shops, leading to what some have called 'food
deserts'? Or Cadbury's role in sourcing their cocoa through commodity markets,
which effectively keeps market prices low, resulting in poor labour standards in
cocoa production? What too of the ethical issues associated with promoting
chocolate consumption on the one hand and buying sports equipment to alleviate
obesity on the other?
(Doane, 2005: 218)
Others have argued that stakeholder engagement continues to be more a way
of pacifying communities than really engaging. BP (British Petroleum, rebranded as
'Beyond Petroleum' and then quietly dropped), well known for its stakeholder dialogue
programmes, has been criticized by civil society groups, including Amnesty
International, for displacing local communities in Turkey or Azerbaijan. BP promotes
its CSR to shareholders while passing on any relevant risk to the host government,
thereby avoiding any direct responsibility as, according to legal convention, only
governments and individuals acting on behalf of governments can commit human
rights abuses. These and other criticisms led BP to review its approach, issuing a
human rights 'guidance note' to project leaders and reaffirming its commitment to
the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in its 2006 Sustainability Report (verified
by Ernst and Young), noting that a company can 'demonstrate leadership in supporting
and promoting international human rights norms' (BP, 2006: 3), which it is doing
by helping to provide for the world's energy needs. Doane and the pressure group
Corpwatch also note that BP has essentially bought itself into the renewable energy
business by taking over smaller, more ethically motivated firms, making it difficult
for some highly innovative small green businesses, the 'ethical minnows', to place
their model of a more sustainable business practice on to a larger, possibly global,
scale. These minnows are invariably swimming against the tide of ferocious
competition from less ethically motivated corporate competitors. Doane concludes:
The ethical minnows, however, seem to offer a gem of inspiration. One could
foresee a future wherein big business no longer exists at all. What the ethical
minnows have is an ability to innovate: to be closer to the people that produce
and consume their products and develop products that serve, rather than drive,
human need. They tend to drive out the middle-man and make new rules that
satisfy a social end. The New Economics Foundation, amongst others, has called
this 'social innovation'.
(2005: 228)
A positive future for minnows will require boldness in effecting individual and
institutional change. It will probably require a system of sympathetic global govern-
ance that is unlikely to emerge in the very near future, and will require businesses
to go beyond the bottom line and seek out the changes to practices, regulations and
organizational culture that are being developed in the more progressive organizations.
If this happens, CSR could easily and genuinely become synonymous with sustain-
ability. Wal-Mart, like BP, have publicly adopted pro-sustainability practices, partly
to rescue their brand reputation as a result of serious public criticism of their social
and economic impact, as exemplified in Robert Greenwald's excoriating documentary
